When I was a little girl, I went to synagogue with my father. One of my
earliest memories is being young enough to sit on his lap in the men’s section,
where we shared two special games. The first he called “Find the Aleph,”
the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It may sound easy, but believe me,
looking at a sea of black Hebrew letters and finding every Aleph on the
page was quite the challenge for a child of three or four. Unfortunately, this
game was designed to keep me quiet, but it had quite the opposite effect, since
every time I’d find one I’d cry out, triumphantly, “Aleph!”
And so he devised the second, far quieter game.
My father taught me to braid his tzitzis. I don’t think he ever
braided my long brown hair, but he taught me how to plait the strings that hung
from his soft, white prayer shawl.
I didn’t always understand his words or his ways but I understood his hugs
You are probably thinking, why is this significant? Of course a man can make
a simple braid, and why shouldn’t he be able to impart this basic skill to his
only daughter? You see, it’s that my father was an immigrant. He spoke many
languages, some better than others, I didn’t always understand his words or his
ways. Still, I understood his hugs, the way he tickled me under my chin, and the
hard candies he always had in his pocket. And somehow I understood his silent
instructions. Over, under, over, under – the braid took shape as my little
fingers learned the lessons of his big, gentle hands.
As I got older, there is very little else I remember my father actually
teaching me. After all, what could he teach a girl who got straight A’s in
school and wanted to go to an Ivy League college? Who valued her secular
education more than any old world folk wisdom he could possibly pass on.
And yet, today, what I remember from college seems like a big, blur of
intellectual trivia compared to the simple lessons of my father: he taught me to
say the Shema before I went to sleep, and the Modeh Ani when I
woke. He taught me the blessings for bread, for wine, and even for the
occasional Scotch. I may not remember to always say these prayers, but I know
them all by heart. The way I know my social security number…and my Jewish name.
When my father died after a short illness, peacefully in bed at the age of
eighty-two, a man from the Jewish burial society, the Chevra Kadisha,
came to prepare his body according to Jewish law. He asked me if my father had a
tallis, he’d want to be buried in, as a shroud. Of course he did, I said,
and I went to get his same old and treasured prayer shawl from its familiar worn
velvet bag, beside his bed.
As this physical connection was broken, a new bond was formed
The man from the burial society – whose name I don’t remember but
whose kindness I will never forget – asked me a question then that in my shock
and grief I wasn’t even sure I heard correctly. He asked if I would like to keep
one of the tzitzis. I stared at him, dumbfounded and almost laughed with
sudden joy and a wave of unexpected relief. “I can really do that?” I asked,
amazed, that the strict laws of Jewish burial ritual would permit such a
sentimental but meaningful gesture. He assured me they would and asked for a
scissor.
I got it, and tensed as he prepared to cut the cord. At that moment one of my
Dad’s last links to the earthly world was cut and I felt an almost umbilical
severing of the bond between the father who had filled the days of my life and
the one who would come to inhabit my memory. And yet, as this physical
connection was broken, a new bond was formed.
Today, every time I touch the tzitzis it is as if I am touching my
father. The braided cord – for it is, indeed, a braid I made – is a tangible
reminder of one of his sweetest lessons. In the braids of his tzitzis are
the cords of his life, the temporal entwined with the spiritual, in a special,
private link that remains long after his soul departed. The tzitzis is
now a bookmark in my prayer book, and as I turn each page I find the alephs
and remember my father, whose quiet wisdom I hope to honor every time I touch
his final gift.
